Amika Mobile Blog

At the most recent ASIS 2011 in Orlando, Florida a discernable shift in the market continued to occur. At ASIS 2009, many of the enquiries for critical alerting came from University and College requirements to adhere to the Clery and Higher Education Acts to ensure the safety of students on campus post Virginia Tech. At ASIS 2010, a shift in the market started with requests from other sectors such as healthcare, finance and government. This shift continued this year with three times the number of organizations approaching Amika Mobile from all sectors. Why is this requirement occurring? A number of reasons come to mind – employers have to comply with laws and want to ensure that their employees are safe from workplace violence. External threats from disgruntled individuals tend to increase in difficult times. Finally, the global unrest and threats continue to drive transportation security laws and decision makers to capabilities to ensure the safety of individuals in their facilities be they public places like airports and sports arenas or private facilities where watch lists are kept to ensure individuals that should not get access, are kept out.

… Sue Abu-Hakima …CEO Amika Mobile

Very sad story broadcast in the news today.  Eric Leighton, an 18 yr old student from a local Ottawa High School died after an explosion in shop class. Four others including the teacher were injured as the students were making BBQs and the canister exploded as the student was welding. It seems the canisters had highly combustible peppermint oil in them previously. To compound this, the school’s warning PA system failed. Today, students, teachers and school staff are walking around with mobile devices. All classrooms have telephones. All schools also have LANs with classroom computers. Any number of systems and technologies would have helped the 1600 people in the school get informed as they proceeded to safety. Instead staff had to run between classrooms and get an evacuation going. Clearly, our schools need to adopt new technologies to keep up with their students as they stay informed about everything.

…Sue Abu-Hakima, CEO Amika Mobile

It is impossible to predict where an end user will be when there is an emergency. They may be at an airport waiting for a flight, they may be visiting someone at their offices, they may be visiting a colleague at a University, they may be speaking on the telephone, they may be waiting for care at an emergency center in a hospital, etc. As such, it is impractical to rely that an emergency alerting system would always have the correct contact information whether it is an email address or phone number. This is why it is essential for alerting systems to include the auto-discovery of devices in the vicinity as part of the solution. As such, any discovered device on the network such as a Smartphone, laptop, iPad, iPod Touch, Playbook, Public Speaker or TV monitor must be alerted.  People move around and the technology must be evolved to adapt to their habits. Furthermore, a person will have many devices that can be contacted and the safest way to ensure that they get the message is not to assume one over the other but broadcast simultaneously to all.

… Sue Abu-Hakima …CEO Amika Mobile

Utilities, Shopping Centers, Airports, Colleges and Universities typically have their own security. In addition to this, it is important to coordinate with local police, fire and EMS services. Again, in disparate systems such as those used on Sept 11 in 2001, emergency communication interoperability was found to be a huge problem. For this reason thousands lost their lives including entire fire, EMS and police detachments. Today’s technologies make it much easier to communicate in emergencies over a number of layers including WiFi, SMS, Twitter, Facebook, Email, Paging Systems, Public Speakers, etc. Coordination with First Responders is key and will result in saving lives both at the facility where the emergency occurred, the nearby community as well as with First Responders.  

… Sue Abu-Hakima …CEO Amika Mobile

Often a community is formed around a power, water or nuclear utility or around a college or university campus, shopping center, etc. When an emergency occurs, it is very important to alert and inform individuals within a geographic area. This can be achieved through Community Portals where end users sign-up to receive alerts or it could be achieved through technologies where alerts are sent to a set of devices within a particular geography once an auto-discovery of those devices is achieved over Internet or WiFi networks.  

… Sue Abu-Hakima …CEO Amika Mobile

Mobility continues to grow exponentially. Indeed, the latest numbers show that more laptops than desktops are sold. Also 4 Billion people now have mobile phones. That is two thirds of the world’s population! As such, emergency management and alerting cannot ignore mobile users. Systems must have the capability to pop up alerts on laptops and reach out through WiFi or cellular networks to the mobile phone users.

… Sue Abu-Hakima …CEO Amika Mobile

Many users are walking around with mobile devices today – the latest figures show that 4.1 Billion people have mobile phones. Couple that with the fact that more laptops than desktops are sold now with the 2009 figures showing over 177M sold, it is clear that the world is more mobile than ever. This means that people are often engrossed  while they are moving about on their mobile devices. This is why emergency notification systems cannot ignore WiFi as a student in residence on a campus in the basement is more likely to get a WiFi alert than an SMS alert.  

 … Sue Abu-Hakima …CEO Amika Mobile

Very often one is working on a desktop or a laptop on 4 or 5 applications with several documents open. Most studies have shown that people ignore fire alarms and loud speakers especially as they are listening to music and busy working.  A very effective means is to interrupt the users on the desktop, laptop or SmartPhone with a Pop-up alert with the notification of the emergency as well as the graphics associated with that. Most Pop-ups do not allow the user to continue until the emergency is cleared. Even if the user gets very annoyed, they are likely to at least put their head up from the cubicle and ask what is going on!

.      … Sue Abu-Hakima …CEO Amika Mobile

In an emergency situation, it is essential to account for everyone on the premises. This is straightforward in a situation where there is strong access control and the facility is not an open campus, hospital, sporting arena, airport, etc. However, in public venues a combination of location-based information and 2-way situational awareness is essential. People can be located through devices on WiFi or carrier networks through reverse 911 and they can be targeted with very specific messages that can request a response if they are conscious.

.      … Sue Abu-Hakima …CEO Amika Mobile

Very often in an emergency where a full evacuation of a building or campus is required by First Responders, there is a requirement to ensure that everyone is out and safe. What happens if someone is in a basement in a campus with 20 or 30 buildings that need evacuation? This person needs to be alerted in an emergency. Loudspeakers may reach them – however, they more than likely have nice headphones blasting great music in their ears. In the event that they get a Pop-up alert on their desktop or SmartPhone – they may realize there is indeed an emergency. What if they cannot get out? They need to provide a response to an alert. In the Industry, this is known as a 2-way communication which provides situational awareness - where they get an alert and they respond to it. It could be an SMS alert – so they need 2-way SMS. It could be email, it could be a desktop or laptop Pop-up – regardless, they need to let the First Responders know they are trapped.  Not all solutions provide this, only well-architected ones.      … Sue Abu-Hakima …CEO Amika Mobile

A key priority for public safety is how to deal with all the transient users on mobile devices whose contact information is not known a priori. At an airport where thousands arrive and fly out, at a sporting event  where tens of thousands watch the game, at a campus where people visit on laptops and mobile phones, at a hospital where people come and go, at a shopping center where people pass through, etc. etc. One of the key areas mass notification solutions have ignored is WiFi. Users carry devices enabled by WiFi and somehow all emergency alerts need to reach them without delivering spam. A challenge indeed - but doable as demonstrated by the Amika Mobile platform.       … Sue Abu-Hakima, CEO Amika Mobile

Last year I wrote several posts about Emergency Mass Notification and what to look for. There are 2 clear approaches to this problem, the herd seems to gravitate towards the solution where users identify themselves for emergency alerts in a database. DHS has already shown that Opt-In alerting where users sign up only nets about 2% of those who need to be alerted. So, how will we alert the 30,000 or so students on campus of an emergency if only 600 of them sign up? How do we keep those database records up to date? And how do we alert the other 29,400 people? This is where we clearly need to move away from the herd providing these solutions and use intelligent means to auto-discover the population that needs to be alerted and what devices they need to be alerted on.    … Sue Abu-Hakima …CEO Amika Mobile

Twitter is the latest social media phenom that allows  users to broadcast messages en masse to mobile phones through SMS. Can it be relied on for emergency alerting. Recall that the channel for the alerts is still SMS and carriers do not provide channel or timestamp guarantees to be received for SMS. As such, a tweet can  be received like an SMS up to days later depending on the carrier prioritization. As such, those implementing emergency alerting need to be careful that they provide as many alerting channels as they can - WiFi, SMS, Email, Web, Twitter, FaceBook, Voice, etc. This is especially important on college and university campuses where users are on any or many of these channels at once! ……………. Sue Abu-Hakima, CEO Amika Mobile.

Emergency Alerting and Citizen Advisories continue to be very important in today’s world of live shooters, natural disasters like hurricanes as well as unusual occurrences like outbreaks of viruses that quickly get labeled as pandemics. Here is a 10 point checklist to consider when evaluating such solutions: 

1.How fast can an alert be sent and received at full load?Often, delays in sending out and receiving alerts put lives at risk. In December a live shooter was at Virginia tech again and their SMS solution was used to send out the emergency alerts. SMS alerts were still being received 6 days later. The alerts went out instantly but were not received.  

 2.Who can send the alert?Emergency alerting and advisories are typically sent by the persons with the authority to do so. It is essential to have more than 1 person authorized to do so in case the 1 individual who should send the alert cannot.  

3.Can an alert be sent remotely?An emergency in a building or at a facility may force individuals who are required to send the alerts to activate them remotely.  Does the solution in question support this? 

4.Can system notify masses quickly?An emergency alerting system may reach some of the population as registered in a database but not all. It is essential to ensure that multiple pathways can reach individuals in an emergency. This is why solution that provide broadcast alerts without user addressing information are better at reaching the masses.  

5.Can several alerting pathways be used? Some solutions support 1 or 2 methods such as SMS or email for example. It is essential to pick a solution that can support multiple pathways such as WiFi broadcasts, SMS, Email or Voice.  

6.Does system require /support self-registration? Can it broadcast?Most solutions require users to be registered in a database. Very often users do not want to self-register and some system support LDAP integration for getting user names, email addresses and phone numbers. Rare systems support broadcasts over WiFi hotspots and avoid self registration altogether.  

7.Is system redundant and fault tolerant?What occurs when the power fails? Does the system continue working or fail? If an unexpected event occurs with system software, does the solution fail? 

8.Can system target sub-groups:  geographic, zip code, building?Many systems alert or broadcast to entire lists without supporting sub-groups or partial lists. This is important when 1 out of 30 buildings on a campus is affected or 1 floor out of a tower has to be evacuated quickly.  

9.Can system support 2-way so that people can be tracked?In a live shooter situation, it is very important to get as much tactical information for the first responders as possible. Rare systems support 2-way communication or a back channel to command central that provides valuable information about the movement of individuals in an emergency.  

10.Can system be hacked? Is it secure and supports authentication? Authentication and secure access for sending out alerts is also a key feature for solutions that alert. Spammers and hackers would love to get access to these solutions.   …Sue Abu-Hakima, CEO Amika Mobile.

It seems that campus shootings and emergencies continue to occur. The US govt has mandated that all educational institutions including schools, colleges and universities put in place emergency notification procedures to avoid such tragedies as Virginia Tech, and Illinois. In the case of Virginia Tech, an email was sent immediately after the first shooting in the dorm and that email took 2 hours to reach its intended recipients - within those 2 hours, another 31 students were killed. Here are 5 rules of thumb to consider as you are implementing a mass emergency notification plan for your campus:

#1 Have an Emergency Plan & Team - Every campus should have a multi-disciplinary team responsible for the first notifications to the campus population and reaching first responders (police, EMS, fire, etc.). This team must put together a plan for emergencies such as fire in a lab or to deal with a hostile shooter or other threat. This plan must be reviewed and owned by the administration of the academic institution (be it Principal, President, etc.), the students, the faculty and operations personnel.

#2 Leverage Existing Infrastructure at the College/University - WiFi / Email / Voice - Campuses have WiFi networks, Email and Voice networks. These can be leveraged to deliver emergency alerts to the campus population in the first few minutes of an emergency. These will likely save people’s lives.

#3 Have multiple Emergency Alerting Pathways - WiFi / Email / SMS/ Voice - As per practice #2 - campuses spend millions of dollars on infrastructure. Many vendors will work with existing networks and all possible alerting pathways should be leveraged. Indeed Virginia Tech now has 4 methods of alerting including SMS, Email, Voice, Loud Speaker and Whiteboard monitors.

#4 Run through Emergency Exercises to Ensure Campus Population is Aware of Plan - It is difficult to have a plan that is unpracticed. In an effort to avoid disruption to student and faculty, many campuses do not run drills. This is a mistake as “practice makes perfect”. Every term should include a drill of the emergency notification system of the campus.

#5 Review Emergency Plan with local Emergency Forces - Police / EMS / Fire - Finally, the first responders in an emergency will be police, EMS and fire personnel. It is important that they be aware of the campus plan in case of an emergency and any vital early information that they may need to mitigate the risk to students and faculty be collected through the emergency team.

 …Sue Abu-Hakima, CEO Amika Mobile.